If you know anything about the Lakota/Dakota/Nakota Sioux and the Black Hills, you may be wondering how buying a sacred site is even conceivable.

If you don't know, here are some things to catch you up:

The Black Hills are considered sacred by these tribes. It is their genesis site, the setting of important myths, and many rituals are performed there.

By treaty, the land was granted to the tribes as a concession in the war between Sioux leaders such as Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull and the U.S. government.

Not surprisingly, the government illegally changed its mind when gold was found in the Black Hills, and they now no longer belong to the Sioux tribes.

Recently, the Supreme Court offered the Lakota people a very large settlement to compensate for their taking of the Black Hills, which the Lakota refused. They feel strongly that the land is not for sale.

But!!

Now about 2000 acres of it is for sale, because the Reynolds family (private owners) is auctioning it off on August 25th.

The Rosebud Reservation has pledged $50,000 to purchasing the land, but the tribes are trying to raise as much as they can to win the auction.

Otherwise, the state of South Dakota has publicly stated their intention to develop the land, which includes building a road.

Often, when people see the poverty and bleeding cultural wounds on reservations, they wonder what they could possibly do. This is your opportunity. The people of these nations are poor, unemployment is severely high, and the average annual income on Pine Ridge, for instance, is $9000. Yet no one is left to sleep out in the cold. Houses are overcrowded because despite being incredibly impoverished, despite continually being taken from, theirs is a culture of giving. The time I spent with the Lakota changed my life. Being "broke" a) is nothing compared to what broke means on the rez and b ) did not stop me from giving, because I personally know that if I were ever hungry there - hell, even if I weren't hungry - I'd be fed. Think about it!

To learn more about life on the Pine Ridge Reservation, watch this video:

I did my homework and verified that the auction is indeed happening, etc. I have never felt this strongly about raising funds, and man I have raised some funds! You will be so sexy to me if you give! Unless you'd rather not be, in which case I will be so platonically grateful!

Update: the fundraiser is still going on because the auction scheduled for today has been cancelled. That doesn't mean the land isn't still for sale - and the organizers have stated that if they don't secure this tract, the funds will be set aside for future land sales.

There is a very sad trait in European science and ethnology recently- they want us make believe that we are equal to primitive and barbaric peoples. No! We surely can learn from them a lot, BUT they can certainly even learn more from us!

Ok and before you ask what I mean by 'primitive' peoples: I say underqualified in effective manipulation of matter of/and the cosm and philosophical speculation.

There are about four primary cultures (real cultures) on this planet today: Europe, Persian, Indian, China- everything else is either derived from them or not at that level yet. That is how 'primitive' is defined (cause you wanted to know). Also again: I didn't say that primitives couldn't teach us anything..only that they are
deficient more than we in some respect. ('we': of course I'm an European intellectual at least more educated than 90% of the ppl in my country so I'm in a position to say these things)

-No, the divisionised stance isn't applcable to the present situation: European for example includes the Judaic the Xtian the Egyptian of course the Greek, Roman also the Germanic traditions...I was talking globally after all! Also the Persian for example incorproates the Egyptian as well and the Sumerian, (has given birth to the Arabic- anything about it that can be called culture anyway) and has inspired the Indian as well...from which the Chinese again has received many inspirations...

And now I already hear the argument: the Lakota for what-ever it is worth have received 'inspiration directly from nature'...well so have the great cultures- and made something out of it, I say! We have basically all started from scratch anyway, Writing has been actually developped by the so called Danubian civilisation in Europe about 6500 years ago as they have recently found out...not to boast..it has been forgotten in those parts again as well...

I don't think buying back their land for them will make any difference. The U.S. Government has already demonstrated time and time again that they don't respect the principle of private property when applied to Native Americans. If the Sioux buy back their land fair and square what is to stop Uncle Sam from simply taking it away again? A deed of ownership is just a piece of paper; it can't stop a bullet.

Kuroyagi, how much history of the Americas have you studied? When Cortez showed up, Teotihuacan was larger than Vienna, cleaner, better designed, and more prosperous. We've found ampitheaters so cunningly designed that a word spoken at normal volume on stage carries to the audience as if through a microphone. The Mound Builder people created a pyramid larger than any Giza, and a complex series of structures stretching over 55 miles that showed a better grasp of Astronomy at the time (~3500 years ago) than any in Europe. The Iriquois Federation in the Northeast had developed the land into something like a park, thousands of square miles of forest tended so well it provided food for millions. No destructive farming, no plows- they just encouraged edible plants and game. They also had a representative democracy that tied together many separate states and that system is what the US government is based on- this used to be an acknowledged well known fact here, until it became time to reframe the natives as 'primitive' to make stealing their land and wiping them out a 'Christian' thing to do. The Inca built stonework so well that masons today struggle to understand their achievement- it cannot yet be duplicated. The Salish in the northwest carried on trade with China, with routes stretching all the way to Florida. A city in a lake with millions of inhabitants was fed using food farmed on rafts. The dirt that was used was specially prepared and more productive than anything we can create today: horticulturalists who have found samples are struggling to duplicate it.

They were not primitive. Europeans came, bringing the diseases bred in their filthy cities with them. By this they conquered. They subjugated the survivors, burned their books, and forced their culture on the few that were left. In South America, the jungles consumed the great cities and roads, and they are still trying to find them all. In North America, grass and trees grew over the great mounds- Teotihuacan was demolished to make way for Mexico City.

In short, what you are doing is nothing more that regurgitating the revisionist bullshit some white people like to tell themselves to make them feel superior.

This is a postcard sent from the dining room of the HMS Russel's Teapot. Wish you were here- the band is spot on tonight, and we're having "all the way down" turtle soup!